This month, Cheeses Murphy brings his fabulous flying panini press to Piece/Meal. Munch on hot grilled cheese while you enjoy an intriguing reading from the script that won our 2011 24-Hour Playwriting Contest.

Neighbours by Allie Bell is a thought-provoking absurdist comic-drama. Plucking stories from the headline, it explores contemporary issues of sedition, homeland security and interrogation. On stilts.

Join us for  a night of theatre, grilled cheese and the unexpected.

Wednesday February 8, 2012
Doors open at 7:00 PM
The Button Factory
25 Regina Street South,
Waterloo, ON N2J 1R8

Pay what you can. Suggested donation $10.
Food will be available for purchase courtesy of Cheeses Murphy.
Cash bar.

Who or what is Cheeses Murphy?

Cheeses Murphy is the buttery brainchild of the Princess Cafe. Open only 7 hours a week, in the middle of the night, it serves up a full menu of unique, delicious grilled cheese. At Piece/Meal, you’ll have the chance to sample just a few of these melty creations.

Details:
Saturday, January 28, 2012
7:00 PM to 10:00 PM
The Button Factory
25 Regina St. South
Waterloo, ON N2J 1R8

Admission:
Pay What You Can. Suggested donation $10.
Seating is limited. First-come, first served.

About the Play
Betrayal, trickery and embalming fluid are no laughing matter, unless you’re playwright Vern Thiessen. He turned the true-life story of two scientists charged with keeping Lenin’s corpse preserved forever into the crowd-pleasing and critically acclaimed play Lenin’s Embalmers. Described in the New York Times as “a spunky dark comedy with wit and verve,” Lenin’s Embalmers earned Theissen rave reviews and a Governor General’s Award nomination.

About the Author
Thiessen, who is based in both New York and Canada, won the Governor General’s Award in 2003 for Einstein’s Gift. His play Shakespeare’s Will played to sold-out houses at the Stratford Festival last summer and has been produced in Germany, Wales, Italy and the United States. Vimy received rave reviews at the Blyth Festival and the National Arts Centre in Ottawa last year. Thiessen will be in Waterloo workshopping his latest play, Do Not Disturb, with Pat the Dog Playwright Centre. This new play, a saucy farce, will see its world premiere in August at Theatre Collingwood.

This project is made possible in part by the generous support of Canada Council.

Pat the Dog Playwright Centre continues its popular piece/meal reading series with an exciting, expanded
version.

We’ll  be serving up a light meal and four new, full-length theatre pieces — all of which originated from our
playwright centre. The smorgasbord of plays includes a mix of works from playwrights across the province and is accompanied by food and the launch of a visual arts installation in the historic Button Factory. Attendees to the
November 16 session will be the first to see Gareth Lichty’s newest creation.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

The Gods and Calvin Brewer by Jessica Anderson, who won 3rd place in 2010 24-Hour Playwriting contest.
Ancient gods and Greek food make for a classic-themed start to the series.

Wednesday February 8, 2012

Neighbours by Allie Bell, winner of the 2011 24-Hour Playwriting contest.

Wednesday March 7, 2012

First Dance by Trevor Copp. Two gay men set about creating a dance for a ritual that has no history. Wedding
cake will accompany this intriguing physical movement piece.

Wednesday April 11, 2012

The Barrel Project – a collective piece that answers the question, “Whatever happened to all those
Seagram barrels?” Whisky-soaked food accompanies this multi-media event.

For all piece/meal sessions

Admission:

Seating is limited, so reservations are required. Book your ticket through the Button Factory 519-886-4577.

This project is made possible in part by the generous support of the Kitchener-Waterloo Community Foundation.

Armed with only a page of notes, a computer and their imaginations, playwrights from across Ontario spent 24 non-stop hours this past weekend fighting off sleep and pounding out an original play.

The third annual competition proved to be the most challenging yet. “The breadth of submissions was impressive, which made our job very difficult,” says Lisa O’Connell, Pat the Dog Playwright Centre’s Artistic Director.

But we have our winners:

• Grand Prize: Allie Bell of Toronto for Neighbours
• Second Place: Cody Sears of Toronto for How Soon we Fall
• Third Place: Evan Bawtinheimer of St. Catharines for The Volcanic Bomb
• Honourable Mention: Monica Fuentes of Burlington for The Inconsolible Blueness of Jeans

Wendy Philpott, one of the contest’s judges describes the winning play. “Through language and character this play achieves a sense of familiarity by alluding to the current issues of national security, extraordinary rendition and interrogation. Full of light and dark – it’s both ridiculous and serious.”

As our Grand Prize winner, Bell receives:

• $500
• A public staged reading
• A playwright Q&A published on our site

Sears and Bawtinheimer will also receive a reading.

Congratulations to our winners and everyone who took part. We know how gruelling this challenge can be.

They’re writing in coffee shops, on the bus, in the park — and they’ve been doing it for 23 hours straight.

Join Pat the Dog Playwright Centre’s Artistic Director Lisa O’Connell as we wind down the last hour of our Annual 24-Hour Playwriting Contest. How do they do it? Why do they do it? How can I do it?

Come to Pat the Dog’s international headquarters in Waterloo’s heritage Button Factory as Lisa counts down the last 60 minutes of this intense contest while discussing the format in an hour-long seminar. She’ll look at how to survive the contest, how to write under pressure, why artificial deadlines can be important and why even acclaimed playwrights still enter these contests.

Saturday, October 1, 3:00 – 4:00 PM
Button Factory
25 Regina Street South
Waterloo, ON N2J 1R8

Stock up on coffee and dust off your lucky mug. Pat the Dog Playwright Centre is thrilled to announce we are hosting our third annual 24-hour playwriting contest. This means 30 adrenaline-pumped writers from across Ontario will be hitting the keyboards from 4:00 PM on Friday, September 30, 2011 to 4:00 PM Saturday, October 1, 2010.

All contestants write off-site, so you can write at home, in a coffee shop, on a bus… the location is up to you. There’s no entry fee and no restriction on final script length. All you have to do is write an original play using three secret words — in 24 hours. How easy it that?

Not very. But the rewards could be great. Our winning playwrights are everywhere!

• Last year’s winning script, Receiver of Wreck by Matthew Heiti, received a workshop with Pat the Dog Playwright Centre and is slated for a public presentation in Sudbury this fall. Heiti is also the winner of RBC Tarragon Under 30 National Playwriting Competition and has been appointed Playwright in Residence at Sudbury Theatre Centre for 2011-12.
• Second-place winner, Evan Tsitsias, is completing his participation in Tarragon’s 2010-11 playwright unit, and had a Summerworks’ hit with Strange, Mary Strange, which received 4 Ns and a coveted Critic’s Pick with NOW Magazine.
• Jessica Anderson’s The Gods and Calvin Brewer, not only placed third in our contest and will be part of our upcoming piece/meal performance series, but was first runner-up in the Hamilton Fringe Playwriting Contest (2011) and received an honourable mention in Ottawa Little Theatre’s One-Act Playwriting Competition (2011).  Anderson’s full-length play, My Purple Wig, received the Special Merit Award in Theatre BC’s National Playwriting Contest (2010) and was short-listed for RBC Tarragon’s Under 30 National Playwriting Competition.

Rules & Regulations:

1. The contest is open to anyone living in Ontario, except contest Jurors. Space is limited to the first 30 entrants, accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. To enter, just fill out our online form here.
2. Entrants can work from a page of prepared notes, but all plays are to be original works.
3. The script must include, in some form, the three secret words we select. These words will be emailed to the participants at 4:00 PM on Friday, September 30, 2011.
4. Participants must email their play to the designated email address no later than 4:00 PM on Saturday, October 1, 2011.
5. Scripts must be in electronic format (acceptable extensions include .doc, .docx, rtf, .pdf, or .txt), written in 12 point Arial, Courier or Times Roman, double-spaced between speaking parts, and formatted for 8 1/2” X 11” paper.
6. The title page should contain the title of the play, your name, contact number and email. The play itself must NOT contain your name, but have a header with the play title and page numbers.

Prizes & Notification:
Winners will be announced on our website on Monday, October 4 at 4:00 PM. Prizes will be awarded as follows:

• First place will receive $500, a public staged reading of the winning script and full bragging rights. We’ll also feature you on our website in a Q&A.
• Second place: a reading.
• Third place: a reading.

Heiti must work well under pressure. Not only did his 24-hour script, Receiver of Wreck, win our contest, his play, I Drag My Coffin Through The Lonesome North, took top prize in the RBC Tarragon Under 30 National Playwriting competition — just days later.

Receiver of Wreck recently received a workshop with Pat the Dog Playwright Centre. Here’s what Heiti had to say  about his experience.

Setting: Fom one coast of Canada to the other.

Can you give a one or two line summary of the piece? A shoe salesman chops off his foot with an axe.  An esthetician has hers amputated by an outboard motor.  At opposite ends of the same country, staring out at two different oceans, two people each lose something on the same day and are sent crashing together toward the dark heart of Canada.  Receiver of Wreck is a grotesque comedy about human waste and the mystic potential of change.

Where did the idea for Receiver of Wreck come from?
I had been reading about the Salish Sea human foot discoveries – for a few years feet had been washing up on the West coast and none of these feet had been identified and no matching pairs found.  It was such a lonely image to me, all these feet lost at sea, missing their partners.  I was also reading about the giant uncharted masses of garbage floating in the ocean, called trash vortexes and listening to a lot of Tom Waits rambling late at night.  Then I came across the term “Receiver of Wreck” – the government official in charge of ocean salvage – and I thought what a great mystical sounding title.  So I loaded up on caffeine, deprived myself of sleep, thought about how all this connects to a button, a peach and skin… and some weird things happened.

Receiver of Wreck was written as part of Pat the Dog’s 24-Hour Playwriting Contest. How did this artificial time limit help or hinder the process?
Deadlines are always great weapons to have in the creative process. Next day deadlines, however, are an extreme kind of pressure. I usually rely on a tidal wave of research to carry me through a first draft.  The 24-hour competition removed that crutch for me and forced me to trust my gut and give more of the sandbox to my subconscious. I started the play in my living room, continued it in the back of a taxi and finished it, fighting sleep, on a bus ride to Moncton. Some decisions made in this mad rush are cringe worthy later, some you don’t even remember making, but generally that late night wildness is a fun way of writing you can’t experience under normal circumstances.

What aspects of the play were you looking to explore during the workshop?
It’s a very physically challenging piece, so we decided to place an emphasis on exploring this physicality. How do two actors deal with being ‘one-legged’ for an entire play?  How do these actors become shoes floating in an ocean? How do we capture this feeling of crossing an immense space? And how can we do all this with a sense of whimsy, a sense of play? In contrast, another large portion of the play is guided by the character of the Weather Man through a kind of beat poetry/narration. We wanted to look at how this speech functions rhythmically in time or counterpoint to the physical movement of the piece. And overall – how do we balance a sense of mythology with the harshness of the real world.

What did you discover about your script or yourself during the workshop?
I think fresh perspectives always open you up again to the possibilities of where a script can go. It can be overwhelming too, because it’s a reality check on how far the piece can be from being ‘complete.’ When you write in your comfy little box at home, you can keep pretending things work…even when they don’t. Having a script read aloud for the first time is a vulnerable experience, but what it exposes – the ‘bad’ lines, the flaws in logic, the character inconsistencies – are important things to confront…and laugh at.

What was the greatest benefit of the workshop?
The greatest gift the workshop gave me were the beautiful people I had a chance to work with. We had a very informal process in which I felt we were all equals meeting to make something better. By the end of the two days I had a wealth of new ideas, new ways of seeing the piece and attacking problems. It’s been a reinvigoration for my rewrites…which should be done soon…I hope.

What advice would you give a playwright going into his/her first workshop?
Please don’t be precious about your script. Walking into the workshop you need to be ready to let go of the piece and give it to others to play with. Allow this to be the humbling experience every creative process should be. That being said, while observing and listening and allowing these ideas to affect you, don’t lose focus of where you want the finished story to go.

Any final comments you’d like to add?
Thanks to Pat the Dog for the opportunity to work with such wonderfully creative people – Len, Leah, Brad, Trevor, Erica and, of course, Lisa.  This contest and workshop process are invaluable tools in developing writers.

To celebrate all cultural movements in the Waterloo Region, Pat the Dog is teaming up with our other Button Factory partners — Neruda Productions and the Waterloo Community Arts Centre (WCAC) and throwing a Possibility Party.

There’ll be live music, food and fun. Whether you’re blocked or bursting with ideas, a technical geek or an art lover, you’re invited.

Thursday, June 23, 2010
5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
The Button Factory
25 Regina Street, South
Waterloo, ON

Care to join the fun? Please RSVP via our Facebook page. Don’t do social media? Just show up. After all, for this event, anything’s possible.

Monday, April 18, 2011

7:00 PM to 10:00 PM
The Button Factory
Admission: Free. Everyone is welcome.

The week at Predella Open Studio, we’re focusing on individual projects in progress.

If you have a project you’re working on, or would like to start bring it along. From strategies to bust through blocks or build specific skills to just getting through the hard parts of writing, we’ll be working on developing skills specifically related to your own writing goals.

Not sure what Predella’s all about? Check out the Predella FAQs.

To keep you in the loop we’re posting all Predella Open Studio events on our Facebook Fan Page. You can also follow us on Twitter or subscribe to our RSS feed.

7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
The Button Factory
Admission: Free. Everyone is welcome.

This week, Predella Open Studio we’re putting our pencils to paper with design in mind. We’ll be looking at ways to make you look good, whether you’re updating your business card, creating a poster, or putting together your CV.

Topics include typography, use of colour, and the four basic design principles everyone should know.
Since this is an active workshop, you’ll have a chance to put the concepts into practice. Got a poster or business card you’re working on? Bring it along.

Not sure what Predella’s all about? Check out the Predella FAQs.

To keep you in the loop we’re posting all Predella Open Studio events on our Facebook Fan Page. You can also follow us on Twitter or subscribe to our RSS feed.